Chapter Text
Dimitri had long since given up on warmth. He always felt cold, and whether it was Faerghus’s natural weather or the chill in his soul, he didn’t know--nor did he cared to. He kept his fur cloak tight around his shoulders, a pathetic attempt to stave off shudders and ghosts alike. Its weight had become something of a comfort, however, and in the early morning light, he needed all of what he could garner.
Last night had turned into actual festivities. Caspar, Annette, and Ashe had gone traipsing through the monastery and returned declaring they’d found a cache of musical instruments of all sorts. He and Raphael had been requisitioned to carry them outside (it had taken Claude’s prodding and most Blue Lions’ pleading to convince him), and before long they had Dorothea standing atop the stairs leading to the dining room, belting out a beautiful song about loss. Felix had surprised everyone by dragging Annette up there, and although she had declared him evil and cruel, cheers from several other students coaxed her into a rhyme.
After that, they all seemed to derive great pleasure from exposing each others’ talents: Leonie asked Lorenz very loudly if he still wrote poetry, earning everyone a quick recital from an unusually bashful Lorenz; Hubert’s low voice somehow managed to be overheard by everyone as he declared that he seemed to remember Ferdinand singing at the most inconvenient hours (Ferdinand, of course, was not remotely shy at the idea of joining Dorothea up the stairs); Sylvain crashed Bernadetta’s quiet corner to ask about her writing (she yelped and hid until no one paid her attention again), and eventually--to everyone’s astonishment--Edelgard asked Claude if he still knew these peculiar dance styles of his. The spark of joy in Claude's eyes struck something bitter in Dimitri, and he watched them dance sullenly, mulling over how his golden boy seemed to share things with even Edelgard. He truly was everyone's friend.
Although if one was honest, that seemed true of almost all the students that night. It had been as if a spell had been cast on them--as if five years of war and pain had been temporarily erased from their memories--and they simply celebrated their being together. He had not been able to fall under this sway, no more than he could allow himself to grieve Dedue, and a few more had seemed to escape it. Felix and Hubert had spent a significant amount of time glaring at each other, Linhardt had slept through most of the night, and at times Dorothea's smile slipped, and her gaze flitted between Edelgard and Dimitri, her thoughts easy to guess. Dorothea had spent enough years on a stage to know pretense when she saw it.
Dimitri had neither the inclination nor energy to join the play, as she had. In a way, this morning was very similar. His classmates had gathered around the greenhouse, and he watched from a distance as they formed two half-circles--one, closer, with the Blue Lions; a second, slightly farther, for the students of the other Houses--with Mercedes in the center, facing them. Her words didn’t carry far enough for him to hear; no doubt she had found the perfect ones to honour Dedue and the piece of Duscur culture lost through him. Ashe’s shoulders shook as he stepped forward, a large, bulbous seed in his hands. Sylvain and Ingrid dug the hole, and even Felix was present--and wasn’t that ultimate irony? Everyone attended this little funeral--everyone except him.
How could he, when Dedue’s voice haunted his night? When he heard him call his name and pray for his safety, for the future of the Kingdom, for his happiness? How impossible a concept, happiness, when all that Dimitri loved had been torched, exterminated. His Father, his stepmother, his best friends… No, he couldn’t mourn them yet, not until he accomplished what was asked of him and fulfilled his revenge--not until the ghosts quieted and allowed him a night of peace.
“Dimitri.”
Byleth’s voice startled him; after five years of it whispering in his ears, he’d forgotten what it truly sounded like. He tilted his head to the side and watched their slow approach, fondness roiling with betrayal within him. The Professor had guided them all, five years ago, and to learn now that they had chosen to stay by Edelgard’s side struck a deep chord of bitterness within him. He did not understand, nor did he care to any longer. They had made their choice.
“Go away.”
They stepped next to him by his side instead, and watched the ceremony below in silence. Dimitri turned away and clenched the wooden railing of his balcony so hard it twisted, fighting his desire to stalk off. If Byleth had come, then they had something to say or do. Fleeing would serve no purpose.
Minutes trickled by, heavy and painful with the Professor’s betrayal.
“Your ghosts, Dimitri… They may be real, but that does not make them right, or just.”
Dimitri startled and glared at them. How could they know? He had never told the Professor about the ghosts trailing him, only that he’d come to the monastery seeking revenge for his massacred family. He searched Byleth’s impassive expression for traces of mockery or deception and found nothing but the frank compassion they so often displayed.
“What would you know about justice, when you walk by that murderer’s side?”
Byleth tilted their head--just a few degrees, yet somehow it conveyed the whole of their disappointment. “Little, perhaps.”
Another long silence followed. It was often like this, between them, even when Dimitri was only a student at the monastery. They would sit and work without words, finding solace and motivation in the quiet companionship. Now there was no solace for him; there might never be again.
“Do they answer, Dimitri?” Byleth lifted their eyes to the skies then closed them. “Your ghosts… do they talk to you? Does your father’s ghost still tell you he loves you, that he has faith in you?”
The questions sounded like accusations, proof that the dead haunting him were wraiths without a sliver of his beloved left to them. Yet Byleth’s tone had cracked, their anguish seeping through as they piled on the question, and that pain flared within Dimitri as if setting his own on fire. His throat tightened and he moved his attention back to the gathered students, mourning the most recent of his ghosts. The Professor sighed, their breath clouding in the chill morning air.
“Some days, I wonder if it would not be worth the haunt, for a chance to hear his voice again, or have the certitude he, at least, approves of the path I chose.”
It struck him, now, where Byleth had been while the students held their feast the previous evening. No one had checked the cemetery, yet hearing them now, it seemed evident they had stayed by their father’s grave. Was it a blessing or a curse, that the dead trailed him so relentlessly? It was true that he heard their whispers, yet now that the Professor’s true voice reached him, Dimitri realized how different it sounded from the one that had plagued his nights. What wouldn’t he give, to truly hear his father’s laugh as they sparred? To hear Dedue gently scold him after another sleepless night? Now all he heard from them were screams of pains and demands for revenge--a plea for him to finish what they could not. It was neither blessing nor curse. It was a duty, and only him could carry it out.
“I walk the path they can no longer take themselves.”
"What of your path? Or do you think you have no road of your own to follow?" The Professor turned towards Dimitri, pinning him under piercing green eyes. “The only sense of justice I can rely on is my own. You should find yours, Dimitri, before it gets drowned in everyone else’s.”
They turned heels and left, heeled boots clicking on the stones, and Dimitri could not remember them uttering so many words in a row outside of a classroom. They had rolled out of Byleth coated in undeniable worry and frustration, striking at questions that tormented him more than he cared to admit. It had been years since Dimitri had questioned the ghosts in his mind, yet Byleth and Claude both scorned the direction they were taking him. He tried telling himself that they didn't understand, yet the grief threaded through the Professor's voice could not be faked. They, too, had vowed revenge on the shadowy figures that had taken Jeralt’s life, all those years ago, and perhaps the Professor had not forgotten or forgiven as much as he’d thought.
Dimitri’s gaze fell to the students below. His Blue Lions were throwing dirt back upon the seed planted in Dedue’s honour, grim-faced. In a few hours, they would be leaving Garreg Mach to hunt and kill the mysterious force behind the Duscur Massacre and so many more deaths. Did he have a path beside what the dead demanded of him? If so, he cared not for it. For now, his path was theirs, and he would get his revenge--for his family, for the people of Duscur, for the Professor and Byleth, and for Dedue, who had given his life so that he may see this through.
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Byleth watched the small strike team of Blue Lions leave the monastery, flanked by Ingrid’s pegasus and Claude’s wyvern on each side, and for the first time since they had woken from their prolonged sleep, they felt a measure of peace. They had not told Dimitri that they, too, walked a past flanked by ghosts--their students, from times past and future both, countless failed attempts to save them. They hovered at the edge of their mind, unexplained feelings of grief guiding them as they tried, once more, to save them from their fates. The Goddess had granted her power over the hands of time, and that, too, was as much a blessing as a curse.
Perhaps this path was vowed to fail, too, as had been every attempt to save their father. Sothis pretended fate could not always be tricked. That, however, was not something Byleth could accept, not yet. The world was cruel. It made mockery of their dreams, shattering them until the shards cut deeper than any blade. Yet Byleth had the power of a goddess, and what was the point of that, if they could not save a year’s worth of students with it? They would keep trying until one day, the pieces of everyone’s dreams could be put together into one beautiful whole.